Yes guitar virtuoso Steve Howe teams up with his multi-instrumentalist son for new album Nexus: an album of cosmic proportions

Steve Howe has teamed up with his younger son, Virgil, on a new instrumental album, called Nexus. It’ll be released via InsideOut on November 17 and, says Steve, the recording will surprise a lot of fans.

“I’ve done a wealth of different things but I haven’t done anything like this before. I feel it’s steering me in a different direction,” he tells Prog via the phone in the US, where Yes are currently on tour. “It’s a full-on collaborative album, not a duet. It’s been refreshing to work with Virgil and we’ve pulled this beautiful album together. Although it’s got shades of mellow music, it doesn’t sit still. It moves across electronic music and my guitars – this is an opportunity to discover what Virgil’s been doing on the side of his drumming with Little Barrie. He’s got a hard rock and funk side but this has totally different shades.”

The idea for the recording came about last year and is based around piano and synth pieces that the rock drummer has been sending his dad over the last few years. When Howe Sr realised the tunes weren’t being used anywhere, he picked out his favourites and added guitar parts, which Virgil then reworked into full songs.

“I tried to bring a different style of guitar, both in the instrument and the styling of my guitar work,” he explains. “Some have my famous ES-175 sound, for others, we moved onto acoustic guitars and used things like Dobros. I got the colourful guitar approach onto the album, that’s what I call guitar texturing. Virgil then brought in more orchestration and that started building the strength of the album. I would say it has a current feel. We didn’t need anyone else, we didn’t need anything else – that’s why it’s just Virgil and Steve Howe.